X-bit labs

ATI's 0.11 Micron Chip on the Run: ATI RADEON X800 XL Review (page 21)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 03/21/2005 | 09:14 AM ]

The second test is more favourable towards NVIDIA’s cards, but the RADEON X800 XL is anyway no worse than the GeForce 6800 GT here. The GeForce 6600 GT SLI wins this test, though.

The highly efficient graphics memory subsystem helps ATI’s cards to win the “eye candy” mode of the second test.

The third test is the most sophisticated one, with long and complex pixel shaders. The RADEON X800 XL challenges the GeForce 6800 GT here, although the latter works in the Shader Model 3.0 mode. The two GPUs clocked at 500MHz help the GeForce 6600 GT SLI configuration make it to the top place.

The new RADEON is at any rate no worse than the GeForce 6800 GT in the “eye candy” mode. That’s a good result, considering that it comes at a low level of noise and heat. The new version of 3DMark extensively uses DirectX 9.0 functions, particularly complex pixel shaders. That’s why the RADEON X800 XL delivers a highly satisfactory performance in this benchmark overall.